I’m another UK-dweller who’s bemused by the sudden appearance of “Black Friday” stuff in shops this year. I’d been aware of it referring to the peak of blatant consumerism, but now it seems it’s a self-justifying label to enhance that blatant consumerism.

Are the downtrodden capitalists reclaiming the phrase? And does this replace or complement our existing Boxing Day commerce binge? *I need to know when to buy shit.*

I spent my Thanksgiving with my dad and had a lovely time. Then I drove home and got stuck in shopping traffic >.< I swear with my dying breath that if everything offered in stores on Thanksgiving were free, I still wouldn't go shopping.

As a retail wage slave who has to work Black Friday today, I can tell you it's bad enough trying to enjoy Thanksgiving knowing the chaos that awaits me at work the next day* let alone having to interrupt the holiday itself with all that nonsense.

Sorry for the rant/whine. I really wanted to say that Dave, WHTM and all you Mammotheers are something for which I am truly thankful. Every bit as good as Pharyngula but with MOAR KITTIES!!!1! Also, I'm truly sorry that Black Friday is being exported to other lands 🙁

*Not to mention that we can't do the 4 day weekend getaway to distant family/friends thing like, ever. Not where I work, anyway; if you call out sick on Black Friday (and Saturday, too) you damn well better have documentation as to why or you're sacked instantly.

I did a ride shift for thanksgiving! Really thankful for the Career guys on shift. They make everything funny.There was another rider, too, and she wasawesome. Thankful I got to meet her, too, because she makes some awesome pumpkin cheesecake.

… and she’s an all around nice lady. 🙂

Now I’m chilling at my aunt’s place for the morning, before heading back out the road.

So the question that has been foremost in my mind: How could you escape being tied up with your hands behind your back using only whatever is in your hair?

the first step is to get your hands in front of you, which is going to depend on how tightly you’re bound and how limber you are. when I was younger I could get my hands from behind my back to in front of me if they were handcuffed. Never tried it with them tied. I’m too fat and stiff nowadays.

after that … not sure. I don’t as a rule carry anything in my hair that would be helpful at that point.

So the question that has been foremost in my mind: How could you escape being tied up with your hands behind your back using only whatever is in your hair?

Ah, I see your family celebrates Thanksgiving much like my family celebrates Christmas dinner. Luckily this is a situation in which I have some expertise.

Your first step is defining what tools you have available in your hair. Lice are no good, and hairbands are only good if you’re handcuffed. The old trick of picking a lock with a hair needle is actually really difficult because it depends on the make of the lock itself. If you’re just *tied up* however, a hair pin is actually more useful because you can hold it with your teeth and jam it between the knots of a rope. This helps losen the knots so you can wriggle your hands more so you can jam the pin in more so you can wriggle more so you can eventually get one or two hands free.

I notice you don’t specify “tied to a chair”? That’s good! In that case Policy of Madness is absolutely right, you want to bring your arms out in front of you. If you curl up on the floor and arc your back, even without being all too flexible it should be possible to strain and bring your arms under yourself (as if you were skipping a jump rope). This is obviously easier if you’re flexible. You can also bend down, lift one leg, push it through and then get the other. Maybe lean against a wall while doing this.

( If you’re desperate, dislocating a shoulder allows a wider range of movement, hurts like all hell seriously oh my god it hurts, and isn’t recommended because it’s difficult getting it back in joint)

With your hands in front of your head you can riffle through your hair to acquire your tools. If you’ve brought a knife in your hair, congratulations. If all you have is a hair pin, see above. If you have nothing and you’re tied up, you now have to eat the rope. This is not particularly tasty, but you ca bite down, twist your arms to strain some of the coils, and repeat until enough have been broken / loosened. It takes a while, but gnawing through rope is entirely possible.

This is more difficult with modern rope because the tensile strength of each fiber is higher.

If you’re locked in a room with a chair and the chair is wooden, you can grab it and use it to smash nearby objects, hoping you an edge breaks in such a way as to be sharp. Congratulations, that’s a knife.

If you are in a perfectly empty room, I most congratulate your captors on their foresight and understanding of escape dynamics. However, you’re still tied with rope, so your best bet at that point is to wriggle your wrists until you’e got friction burns because knots rely on being tight to work and you can sometimes wriggle enough of them apart to start grabbing with your teeth, hold for leverage and then awkwardly untie.

If you’ve got a hair pin and a lock that relies on pressure switching, you can hold it with your teeth like freemage suggested above and pick the lock, then bail until someone else can untie your hands.

Eh, Christmas Dinners without the impromptu trials of fear, suffering and Saw like ingenious traps is no dinner at all. How are you going to cook the potatoes otherwise?

@katz: yes we did talk about that! Then I messed up the e-mail thing and no further stuff happened. Annual dinner at the moment soI’m typing this one-handed while suspended over a pit of gravy. I’ll get back.

No personal stuff? I wanted to talk about my dismay at not having the Smash Bros bundle or a cute kitty.

(Apartment won’t allow cats. We were almost pixel lined away from getting this apartment too so I need to keep my gaming down. Oh wait that only happens in GGer fantasies where gamers are oppressed. The cat thing is real though. Hairy babbbiessss!)

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We Hunted the Mammoth is an ad-free, reader-supported publication written and published by longtime journalist David Futrelle, who has been tracking, dissecting, and mocking the growing misogynistic backlash since 2010, exposing the hateful ideologies of Men’s Rights Activists, incels, alt-rightists and many others.

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